The Price of Female Headship: Gender, Inheritance and Wealth Accumulation in the United States

Dalton Conley and Miriam Ryvicker

Journal of Income Distribution, 2005, vol. 13, issue 3-4, 3-3

Abstract: Female-headed households in the United States suffer from lower levels of asset ownership than their male-headed counterparts. This gap remains after controlling for the lower incomes of female heads. What, then, produces the gender discrepancy in net worth? Using longitudinal, intergenerational data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we ask whether differential patterns of inheritance, savings rates or investment yield this female-male asset gap. Results demonstrate that differential savings rates between female- and male-headed households account for the gender gap in net worth. We speculate on the financial constraints within female-headed households that account for the savings rate differential.

Date: 2005
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://jid.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/jid/article/view/1307 (application/pdf)
Some fulltext downloads are only available to subscribers. See JID website for details.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:jid:journl:y:2005:v:13:i:3-4:p:3-3

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Income Distribution from Ad libros publications inc. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Timm Boenke ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).